Camp Communicate Refreshes Families

For the ninth year in a row families with children who are unable to communicate will spend the weekend at Pine Tree Camp in Rome. The retreat gives parents, children, and siblings a chance to reboot and refresh. Children with non-verbal skills get to practice using high-tech devices that allow them to communicate. Camp Communicate Director Linda Bonnar-Ivery says the weekend gives each family a support group, “It gives them the opportunity to not feel alone and to know there are others just like them and to know what that’s like and to be able to share in that gives them a more sense of self confidence and camaraderie.”Most families return year after year,”It’s something we look forward to all year and we talk about it, we think about it, and it provides respite, it provides another years worth of you might say, spring boarding,” says mom, Lisa McGlone. The camp is quite costly, but donations allow the Pine Tree Society to never have to turn a family away.